Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/462

Rh so far to assert a mere psychological or cosmological theory. The basis of such an assertion, if it has any basis, must be sought outside of any one moment’s experience. On the other hand, in vain would any psychologist, in vain would any realistic metaphysician, attempt to rob my finite consciousness of the significance which this my own moment of singing or speaking has, for me, embodied. This significance is a matter of my experience. Whatever your system of metaphysics, the singer can say: Here at least the world has meaning, for lo! I sing.

Now, as a metaphysical theory, our idealistic doctrine with regard to Being in its wholeness has simply maintained that, without any regard to a doctrine of causation, without regard in the least to any specific view as to the psychology of mental process, the whole universe, precisely in so far as it is, is the expression of a meaning, is the conscious fulfilment of significance in life, precisely as the melody present at a given moment to the singer is for his consciousness the momentary expression of a meaning. And so our theory of Being is not founded upon any prior doctrine of causation. Cause and effect, laws mechanical or laws psychological, fate or freedom, in so far as any of these have Being, are from our point of view subject to the prior conditions of the very concept of Being itself. If nothing can be except what embodies a meaning, we are not first required to explain how anything whatever comes into Being, or how anything whatever is caused. For the cause of Being would itself have Being, and could itself exist, if our analysis is correct, only as the actual expression of a meaning.